baby rights 101, 2020: a reading in seven lenses
Acrylic on canvas, 80 × 100 cm (31 ½ × 39 ⅜ in). Painting by Yiğit Özen.
At a Glance
Right in the middle, between two dark bodies, a small infant is drawn with a thin red line: a body of rings come side by side, a pair of eyes, a single horizontal notch of a mouth. It stands like a diagram laid onto the flesh afterward, staying upon the paint without mixing into it. On the whole surface that red is the only colour; everything else is black, grey and white. The infant's standing on a separate layer turns it into the object of the scene, a specimen number, a sample. The course code in the title supports this too; introductory course, basic knowledge, its subject that small body. The group most written about is the group that can speak nothing on its own behalf; at the custody hearing the child is not even in the room. The crowd around it is not the side listening to the lesson but the reason for the lesson.
The two large figures about it carry faces nearing skulls at the ends of long thin necks, their eyes hollowed, their mouths each a small hole, their hands in the air and their fingers taut like claws. These skull faces and frozen arms summon the dance of death, Holbein's skeleton taking the living by the arm; but the figures here take no one away, movement remains, its direction lost. Neither of them looks at the infant in the centre. Their arms touch one another, no single hand touches the one in the middle; the ring set up around it therefore stands not as protection but as encirclement. On the breasts, where the nipples should be, crosses are scratched; the points where feeding passes are annulled, while large spirals turn about the navel. The giving regions are closed while the receiving regions are left open.
The thin red lines cross the canvas from one end to the other, corner to corner, passing over the figures and staying on the foremost layer without hiding behind them. It reads as a cage, as a frame, as a struck-out record too; the borders drawn on paper are always so, the one who draws them looks at the map, not at who sits beneath it. The same red draws the infant in the centre and cuts the scene crosswise; a single pen does two works. These lines are drawn with fluid paint, at a constant thickness, without hesitation, and because they were thrown after the black beneath had dried they lifted nothing beneath. An eighty-by-hundred horizontal canvas; from two metres the red looks like a separate layer suspended above the surface, at half a metre its thickness stays only thin enough to fill the texture, so it drops to the same plane as the ground. The small figure's eyes look directly out, toward us.
Form and Composition
Thin red lines cross the whole surface along the two diagonals and, without hiding behind the masses, set up the frontmost layer and the painting's geometric skeleton. While in the mirrored order limbs spill outside on all four edges and refuse to fit the composition into the frame, at the centre, where the two masses enter each other, the distinction between figure and ground collapses.
Thin red lines cross the whole surface diagonally. There are two main directions, one going from the lower left corner to the upper right, one from the lower right corner to the upper left, and the two intersect in the central region. The lines pass over the masses and do not hide behind them; that is, they are the frontmost layer. Their thickness is that of a line, their length that of the canvas's diagonal. This net binds the figures to a grid and carries the painting's geometric skeleton onto the surface.
The order is set up in mirror image. In the upper left a head, in the upper right a head; both oval, neither at the same height. The one on the left is closer to the top edge, the one on the right a finger's width lower. Beneath each of them there is a thin neck and arms opening from it to the sides. The left arm of the left figure stretches towards the left edge and opens its hand, and the right arm of the right figure does the same at the right edge. Both hands go as far as to touch the crop. The symmetry breaks in the bodies: the body on the left is more upright, the one on the right more reclined and spreading into the lower right region.
In the centre the two masses enter each other. Hips, legs and arms overlap in the middle band and it cannot be told which limb belongs to whom. This is the real place where the distinction collapses. In the lower central region a long leg stretches to the right and runs parallel to the bottom edge; this is the painting's longest horizontal. Above it a second leg goes the opposite way, to the left. The two horizontals do not cut each other, and there is a narrow angle between them.
At the mid-point a small unit drawn with a red line stands. Built from roundnesses, its scale is half a head, and it sits right in the region of intersection. It has no inner fill, only contour. This unit rides on top of the large masses and does not pass behind them.
There are repeating marks over the bodies. Two crosses on the chest of the left figure, one cross on its belly; one cross each on the chest and shoulder of the right figure. All five are of the same scale, their positions different. On the same surface concentric rings also repeat; two large rings at chest level, one on the left and one on the right. The ground is light and empty; the widest empty area is in the upper central region, the triangle between the two heads. Above there are two hands standing free, as if separated from their bodies. One in the upper central region, its fingers pointing down; the other in the upper right, its fingers up. Neither stands where the arm ends but in the continuation of the arm, and their wrists are not visible. The crop cuts one hand at the right edge, another at the left edge. The bottom edge, meanwhile, cuts two legs. That is, limbs spill outside on all four sides and the composition does not fit into the frame. The contour is thick, dark and continuous everywhere; the only place it breaks is the region of intermingling at the centre.
Colour and Light
The red does not take up even a palm's worth of the surface, but because it is the only chromatic colour it binds the whole field to itself with the cleanness of flag red. Everything else is built from an icy blue grey and a thinned black, and darkness and lightness depend on how much the paint has been thinned with water.
On the whole surface there is a single colour, and that is red. Everything else consists of black, grey and white. The red crosses the surface in thin lines, and it also stands at the centre as the contour of a small figure. The total area it covers is not even the size of a palm, but because it is the only colour it binds the whole surface to itself. Its colour is flag red more than cherry, clean and saturated; nowhere is it smeared with grey.
The ground cannot be counted as white. It is an icy lightness with blue and grey mixed into it; laid irregularly with a broad brush, the marks in every direction. In the upper right corner it slides suddenly to cream, almost to a pale yellow; the only warm point on the surface is there and it looks like an accident. At the left edge, on the other hand, the blue comes out dominant and cools the ground thoroughly. The bodies are painted in thinned black. In some places the paint has stayed close to water, the brush marks transparent and the ground showing through from beneath; in others it is thick and fully covering. Between these two there are at least five or six steps of grey. On the hips and bellies the grey lightens and rises to silver, on the arms and legs it darkens and descends to coal. The contours are the darkest black, drawn thick and wet.
The faces are light. The mask at the upper left is close to white, its eye sockets grey; the face on the right is a little dirtier, with beige mixed into it. These two heads slip free of the darkness of the bodies and approach the lightness of the ground. The same light grey repeats in the rings over the chests, where the brush has turned in a circle. The red drawing in the centre has been set down by a different logic. A small body built of bubbles, drawn only as contour, its interior unpainted; the black body beneath shows through between the lines. That the red is this thin does not weaken it, on the contrary it raises it within the colourlessness around it.
The diagonal red lines extend towards the four corners of the surface. Some are broken, some pass over the figures and disappear. The paint there has thinned, in a few places dropping almost to pink. The cross marks over the bodies are set in black, and some of them are enclosed in a square. The grey inside them is a notch lighter than the body grey around them; this small difference separates the marks from the surface. In the hands and feet the fingers end in the darkest black, the paint gathered and raised at the tips. The same hand forms repeat on the right and left edges and each time the darkness increases.
The matter of light is here left entirely to the density of the colour. There is no shadow, no illumination; darkness and lightness depend on how much the paint has been thinned with water. In the lower right corner there stands a signature thrown in the same red, with two small numerals beside it.
Iconography, Myth and Title
The central red figure's being drawn on top like a separate layer reduces it to the object of the lesson, and the lesson number announces the existence of an unseen narrator. The crosses scattered over the bodies call up the disease warning drawn on a door, and while the document language of the red lines turns the bodies into records, the absence of any hand touching the one at the centre turns the ring into a siege.
Right in the middle stands a small body drawn with a red line. Made of rounds; a head, two arms, two legs, and a pair of eyes at the level of the body. Everything around it is black and white, only it is red. Around it two large figures are entangled with each other; there is a head on the left and one on the right, both with elongated faces, empty eyes, open mouths. Arms and legs pass over one another; to trace one arm backward and find which body it is bound to is impossible. The ground is light-coloured and left empty.
The red figure's being drawn on top, like a separate layer, makes it the object of the scene. It stands like a mark added afterward, an explanation, an item number. The lesson number in the title supports this too; introductory lesson, basic knowledge. That is, a lesson is being taught here and the subject of the lesson is that small body. The crowd around it, on the other hand, is not the party listening to the lesson but the party that is its cause. The line standing on top, rather than explaining the picture beneath it, reduces it to an example. The voice that gives the lesson is not visible, but the numbering announces its existence.
The cross-marks on the bodies are numerous enough to count. At chest level, at belly level, on the shoulder; all placed in the same manner. The cross is the shortest way of cancelling. An item struck from a list, a place marked on a map, a disease warning on a door. The cross drawn on a door would announce that there was a disease inside. Here their being scattered over the bodies says that the cancellation has been applied not to a single place but to every place. In place of the small red figure's eyes too there is the trace of the same mark.
The red lines reach from one end of the canvas to the other and pass over the figures. In some places they break, in others they turn a corner. They can be read as a cage, as a frame, or as a struck-through record. They stand close to the visual language of legal texts and official documents; the page that is signed, drawn on, cancelled. Together with the word right in the title this reading strengthens. When the language of the document and the language of the body coincide on the same surface, the bodies turn into records.
The expressions of the two large heads differ. The left one has closed its mouth, its eyes two empty rings; the right one has opened its mouth, shouting or drawing breath. Neither looks at the small figure. Their arms in the air, their fingers open, they touch each other but no one touches the one at the centre. This ring set up around the thing that ought to be protected stands not like protection but like a siege. That there is no hand touching the one at the centre takes that ring out of being protection. At the upper right there is one more bodiless hand, its fingers curled back and looking down; the arm it is bound to is cut off in the darkness.
Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious
The baby marked on the belly with a thin red line, as a diagram that does not mix into the flesh, shows an unborn or expected idea that is carried. While the crosses at the nipples cancel the points through which feeding passes, the red lines cutting the scene crosswise cover over a knot that was made and then wanted erased.
On the belly a small baby is drawn with a thin red line. Built from rounds, its arms and legs ring by ring, with a mouth and two eyes on its face. It stands like a diagram set onto the flesh afterwards; it does not mix into the paint, it stays on top of it. Not a real body, then, but a sign. The drawing of one body on top of another may show an idea carried within that body. Either an expected child, or one that was never born. The thickness of the line is the same everywhere; it looks as though made in a single stroke, without hesitation. The body beneath, on the other hand, has been darkened by being gone over again and again.
Where the nipples ought to be there are crosses. Two on the body to the right, another one on the left. The points through which feeding passes have been cancelled. Alongside this, large spirals are drawn around the navels, ending each in a dark dot. That is, while the giving regions of the body are closed, the receiving regions are left open. It is as though a relation were being depicted in which milk does not pass, in which the void continues. The crosses are not the same size either; one large and coarse, the other small. The impression arises that the same mark has been made with different angers.
At the left and right ends there are two heads. Both at the ends of long thin necks, their faces approaching a skull, the eyes gouged out, the mouths opened as small holes. Their hands are in the air, their fingers tensed. They stand as if shouting, and also as if startled. The bodies caught between them are wound into one another; I tried to count how many there were, said three, then gave up. Arms come out of one and join to the other. The legs unite in the middle. In this heap, who gave birth and who was born cannot be told apart. The fingers of the hands are long and separate, all opened to the air; none holds on to anything.
Straight red lines pass over the whole scene. Lines that stretch from corner to corner, break, then continue. It can be seen as a net, and also as a scratch. It is as though the painting had been crossed out; the scene made once, then wanted cancelled but not able to be erased. The same red both draws the baby and cuts the scene crosswise. The same pen has been used for both tasks. Some of the lines are cut off over the bodies, then continue on the other side; as if they had passed behind the flesh.
The ground is white and empty. No wall, no room, no bed. This knot stands nowhere. At the lower edge a leg has spilled out, its foot passing outside the frame. The only trace on the ground is the faint shadow beneath that foot; apart from it there is nothing carrying this knot.
Society, Power and Technology
The hollow red contour of the child attached between two full adult bodies shows that the child's need is always reckoned an item that can be postponed. The diagonals dividing the surface draw which neighbourhood a child falls into, and two children studying two kilometres apart live entirely different lives thirty years later.
Between two large bodies, right in the middle, a small figure has been drawn in fine red lines. Built from rings, it has a face, its eyes open. Both of the large ones are full and heavy; the one in the middle is only a contour, hollow inside. The adults have covered the surface, the child looks as though it were attached to them afterwards. This is a placement that shows in what order a life is built; first the affairs of the grown-ups, then the child squeezed in between. No one plans it this way, of course. It is only that the child's need appears each time as an item that can be postponed, because the child does not object.
In the title there is the word right and a course code. As if a subject to be taught, to be explained. Children's rights are indeed talked about this way; in meetings, in presentations, in seminar halls. The group about which the most text is written is the group that can never speak in its own name. At the custody hearing the child is not in the room. When the school regulations are written the pupil is not asked. When the city is planned the playground is put in the last empty space left over, because that is the place that cannot be sold. Most of the things we call done for the child are in fact done to make the grown-up's work easier. The school that starts early is set to the working hours. The playground in the gated estate is set up so that the noise does not enter the apartment block. There is good intention, but the measure is always the grown-ups' measure.
On the chests of the two large figures there are crosses, more than one. Stamped bodies. Themselves people marked somewhere too, they stand in the middle of their own troubles. In a picture like this what falls to the child's share is an inherited burden. Debt is passed on, quarrels are passed on, even the neighbourhood is passed on. To understand why the thing called social mobility is so difficult, no statistics are needed, it is enough to look at a small line squeezed between two large bodies.
Red diagonals cross over the surface, from corner to corner. They divide the scene. Where the lines begin and where they go is not clear, but they pass over the figures. Boundaries drawn on paper are always like this; the person who draws them looks at the map, does not look at who lives beneath it. Which country and which neighbourhood a child falls into is entirely to do with where these lines are drawn, and the child has no part in it. Two children of the same age go to two schools two kilometres apart and thirty years later live two entirely different lives. To describe this as equality of opportunity is a fairly shameless business.
The large figures' hands are in the air, their fingers open, neither of them holding anything. Around the small figure in the middle, meanwhile, there is no one's hand. It stands on its own rings and its eyes look directly out, towards us.
Art History and Comparison
In the grisaille panel the painter gives up colour and leaves a single accent; here the red has been placed over the paint afterward, and the baby stands not within the scene but on top of it. In Holbein's Dance of Death the skeleton takes the living by the arm and does its work; the two long figures here carry no one off, the movement remaining but its direction lost.
A small baby drawn in red stands as though placed afterward on top of the dark mass in the middle; its body of rings set side by side, its face no more than a single horizontal notch. Around it there are two long-necked figures, the head of each resembling a skull, their hands in the air and their fingers spread like claws. The bodies between them are tangled together, and cross-marks are scratched over their chests. Across the whole surface thin red lines pass from one end to the other.
To build a painting in grey and then introduce a single colour on top is an old practice. In grisaille panels the painter imitates sculpture, gives up colour, then sometimes leaves a single accent. Here too the whole scene has been carried out in black and white, red entering the matter in only two places: in the baby and in the lines on the ground. This red has been placed not under the paint but over it; like a note added to the page after the painting was finished. Thus the baby stands not within the scene but on top of the scene. The long red lines on the ground are of the same layer; lines that begin somewhere and end somewhere else, connecting to no figure.
The skull-faced, long-limbed figures are close to the Dance of Death tradition. In Holbein's woodcuts the skeleton mixes in among the living, takes them by the arm, and the scene passes within a familiar everyday moment. In those prints it is clear who the skeleton is, it is death and it does its work. The two long figures here, however, carry no one off. Their arms in the air, their palms open, they seem frozen between a ceremony and a bewilderment. The movement of the Dance of Death remains, its direction lost. The eye sockets of the skulls have been hollowed out too, but their mouths are drawn like a human mouth; they have stayed halfway between a skeleton and a face.
The way the red baby is drawn recalls medical illustration. In books of obstetrics and in early anatomy plates the position of the foetus within the body was shown with a line separate from the surrounding flesh; so that the reader could tell the baby apart from the mother's body. The baby here is exactly like that, separated by its own contour and placed on top of the mass. The difference is that in the anatomy plate the surrounding body is legible, one knows which organ is where; here what is in the mass beneath it is unclear, and the baby floats on top of an indistinct heap.
In the series' 2020 group this canvas is the work that most avoids colour. While the other canvases of the same year pile paint one layer on another, here the brush has done more drawing; the arms drawn in a single stroke, the bodies hatched, the empty space left white. The series' habit of the cross-marked eye has here been carried over to the chests. The hand at the upper right, meanwhile, is connected to no arm, standing alone in the air with its fingers pointing down.
Material, Gesture and the Viewer's Experience
The red lines of fluid consistency cross the whole surface, and because their thickness stays constant from start to finish it reads that the hand did not change speed along a metre-long path. None of the grey tones was mixed on the palette; where the black was thinned by dragging, the light ground beneath came up line by line and formed the greys of its own accord.
The red lines cross the whole surface from end to end and none of them stops at the border of the figures. They are drawn with a fine-tipped brush, with a paint of fluid consistency, and without stopping; their thickness is constant from start to finish, that is the hand did not change speed. The length of the line descending from the upper right to the lower left reaches a metre and there is not a single pause within it. These lines are flung after everything beneath them had dried; where they pass over the black they nowhere lifted what is under them, they stand perfectly clean. The cluster of red bubbles at the centre is of the same fluidity too, each ring closed with a small turn of the wrist and their insides not filled.
The use of the black changes region by region. On the leg at the lower left the paint is plentiful and closed; there the weave of the canvas fills completely and the surface becomes a matt mass. In the middle of the bodies, on the other hand, the same black has thinned by being dragged and the light ground beneath has come up line by line. None of these grey tones was mixed on the palette; they formed of their own accord in the places where the black was left scant. The rings above the breasts are made by dragging turning and turning, the brush there made several turns and left a little more paint at each turn. The dark dot at their centres, meanwhile, is a single touch of a loaded brush and stayed on top without lifting the grey around it.
The ground is painted too, not raw cloth. There is a grey blue coat tinged with a cold white and the brush marks read horizontally. On the right edge this layer thinned, a yellowish tone seeping from beneath it. On the top edge, meanwhile, the ground has entered between the figures; white was laid later into the gap beneath the arm and corrected it by eating away the edge of the black. That is, not everything was left in its first state, at least in this region there was a returning.
The making of the hands and fingers is the fastest work. Each finger is a short push; the brush struck the surface and lifted and at its tip the bristles parted. In the hand cluster at the upper right the fingers have entered into one another and are not separated. The eyes on the faces, on the other hand, are placed in white, thick and with a single pressing; the mouths with a short movement turning around a black dot. The cross marks over the bodies are flung with the same haste too, as two short strokes each, at times spilling beyond their edges.
An eighty by one hundred horizontal canvas; when I step in front of it, opening my arms to both sides, I come close to its width. Looked at from two metres the red lines appear like a separate layer hanging above the surface. At half a metre those lines descend to the same plane as the ground, because their thickness is only just enough to fill the weave of the canvas. On a screen the reds come out brighter than they are; on the wall they are matt and quiet, and beside the black they are noticed only up close.
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